We're proud to announce that Luis von Ahn, the co-inventor of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA and CEO of Duolingo, is the 2018 winner of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize.

Raised in Guatemala, Luis saw the importance of opportunity and education for success. That's why he developed Duolingo, a free and accessible platform for language learning. He has also been a pioneer in cybersecurity through his work with CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA.

Luis has taught and inspired the next generation of inventors as a professor at Carnegie Mellon, where his humorous teaching style attracted hundreds of students to his computer science course each semester.

You can read more about Luis von Ahn and his work as an inventor on Lemelson-MIT.